Is the travel industry ready for the travellers shaping the next decade?
Inclusive travel, shifting markets and what it means for destination marketing in 2025 and beyond
Most travel businesses are designing for a customer who no longer represents where the market is going. It's something we see consistently in our work with businesses across the industry, because the data they're working from reflects who has historically booked, the marketing speaks to who was already listening, and the product was built around assumptions that made sense ten years ago and haven't been seriously questioned since.
It's a pattern we've been talking about a lot lately. And the businesses we work with who are starting to look at it honestly are finding the same thing: the travel market is shifting fast, and from multiple directions at once. The businesses that don't get ahead of it now will feel it in their bookings within the next few years.
The travel market is changing, but what does that actually mean?
The most significant shift we're tracking isn't happening in the markets travel businesses already know well. It's coming from regions that have historically been underrepresented in outbound travel but are now growing at a pace that should be getting every destination's attention.
India is arguably the biggest story in global tourism right now. With one of the world's largest and fastest-growing middle classes, Indian outbound travel is projected to become one of the most significant sources of international tourists within the next decade. When we talk to destinations about this, the honest answer we hear more often than not is that they're not ready - culturally, linguistically, and in terms of product design.
Chinese outbound travel, recovering strongly post-pandemic, represents a market with very specific expectations around payment systems, digital platforms, language and cultural sensitivity that most Western businesses simply haven't built for. Gulf and Middle Eastern travellers - high-spending, fast-growing - have clear needs around halal food, prayer facilities and family-oriented experiences that destinations often pay lip service to at best. And travellers from Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa represent a fast-growing segment that the industry largely ignores in its marketing entirely.
These aren't niche groups. They are whole regions of the world whose travel spending is growing rapidly. They will be (and already are) actively choosing destinations and businesses that understand them over those that don't.
Alongside this, demographic shifts within existing markets are adding to the picture. The over-60s are the fastest growing travel segment in the UK and Europe, and they outspend younger travellers significantly. Disability travel is estimated at over £14 billion in the UK alone - the vast majority of it underserved. Multicultural audiences who grew up in the UK expecting to see themselves reflected in marketing are now entering their peak spending years, with higher expectations and more choices than any previous generation.
The shift isn't that your current customers are disappearing. It's that they're becoming a smaller share of total travel spend, and the segments growing fastest are the ones most businesses haven't designed for.
So who is the 2030 traveller?
It's easy for this conversation to stay abstract, so let's make it concrete. These are the kinds of travellers we're talking about when we raise this with the businesses we support.
She's a 68-year-old travelling with her friend - independent, well-travelled, and spending more per trip than most 35-year-olds. She abandons your website because the accessibility information is buried, the font is too small, and she can't find out whether the hotel room she needs actually exists.
He's planning a milestone family trip from India. He's done the research, he has the budget, and he books with the destination that makes him feel expected and welcome. The one that hasn't thought about him doesn't make the shortlist.
She's a British-Nigerian travel professional booking a group trip for a community that spends well and travels regularly. She can't find a single piece of marketing from your destination that reflects her experience of travel, so she goes somewhere that does.
He's a 55-year-old business traveller with mild hearing loss, a condition he's had for years and doesn't think of as a disability. He just avoids hotels and experiences where he knows the communication won't work for him, and books the ones where it does. You never know he's gone elsewhere.
None of them is waiting for the industry to catch up out of loyalty. They're booking with whoever sees them right now.
Why is this important now?
This is the part that tends to focus minds when we have this conversation with clients, so we'll be direct about it.
The immediate impact is lost bookings. Not dramatic, not sudden, but a steady erosion as travellers from growing markets find competitors who have made the effort and stick with them. Once a customer finds a destination, a hotel, a tour operator that genuinely works for them, the switching cost of going back to one that doesn't is zero. You don't get a second chance to make that first impression.
The medium-term impact is a widening gap between your customer base and the market. If your data, your marketing and your product are all calibrated to a customer profile that represents a shrinking share of travel spend, every year you don't address it is a year your competitors who are addressing it pull further ahead.
The reputational impact is also increasingly hard to ignore. Travellers talk - on social media, in communities, through the networks that matter to them. A destination or business that is visibly not designed for certain audiences doesn't just miss those bookings. It actively signals to a wider group that it isn't for them.
Inclusion isn't a ‘nice-to-have’ sitting in a CSR report. It's a commercial decision about which markets you're choosing to compete in and which ones you're quietly walking away from.
The businesses we see getting this right are the ones that have reframed it as product design and revenue strategy, rather than a compliance exercise or a ‘goodwill’ gesture.
The people already working on this
We're bringing together four industry experts who each see this from a different angle at our upcoming event on June 24th. Between them, they cover destination, trade, and the digital frontier. We asked them which emerging markets the travel industry should be thinking about and how it should be preparing:
Kerrie Bartholomew, Account Director, Clear Marketing - “Some destinations that I work with, particularly in the Caribbean and Mexico, are embracing inclusion with confidence; others are still finding their voice. In my role, I’m already helping tourism businesses better understand LGBTQ+ travellers, but the next priority for me is neurodiversity and dietary inclusion. The more that destinations and hotels recognise and respond to the needs of all their guests, the stronger they (and the commercial opportunities) become.”
Tracey Poggio FCIM, UK Head, Gibraltar Tourist Board, Immediate Past Chair – Association of National Tourist Offices & Representatives (ANTOR) - “The industry continually looks to emerging markets for future growth opportunities. India’s accelerating outbound sector is an example of a largely untapped market with enormous potential. The challenge for destinations remains in integrating infrastructure development, alongside sustainable strategies to expand visitor economy while delivering on responsible and equitable tourism.”
Acelya Sal, Senior Account Director, Black Diamond Agency - "When we audit a destination's digital presence, one of the first things we look at is whose faces appear in the imagery, whose stories are being told, and which languages the content exists in. Most of the time, the answer tells you everything about which markets that destination is and isn't ready for. Reaching new audiences starts long before the booking - it starts with whether they see themselves in your story at all."
Ross Calladine, Accessibility and Inclusion Lead at VisitEngland - "The accessible travel market is too often treated as a homogenous group. It isn't. It's made up of wheelchair users, people with non-visible impairments, deaf travellers, those with cognitive or sensory differences and older people with age-related conditions and that list isn't exhaustive. At VisitBritain/VisitEngland we know that the tourism businesses making progress are the ones who've stopped looking for a single solution and started having real conversations with real customers about what they actually require."
These are the kinds of conversations we’re creating space for within our community. If you’d like to explore this further, join our event ‘Building Inclusive Destinations for the Future’ on 24 June 2026 at the Saint Lucia High Commission in London. It’s an afternoon with senior travel industry professionals focused on practical, honest discussion about what inclusive destination development looks like in practice. Register here.